I HAVE MY OWN SPOT that I’ve proclaimed to be mine during the lunch hour. It is only about a half block away from my work, under the shade of a huge row of trees that border a horse pasture. I like it there. It’s busy enough to keep me interested if I’m bored, and quiet enough to give me peace if I want to spend the hour reading, or as I frequently tend to do – sleeping.

But lately, my favorite of all favorites of retreats has been imposed upon by – for lack of a better word – weirdos.

And I don’t mean that to be rude. I sincerely believe that the people who truly know these people may not find them weird at all. However, I only witnessed their odd behaviours so I don’t have anything else to base my assumptions on. For all I know they’re managers of their workplace, they go home to help their wives cook and clean while also helping the kids with homework and sports. But to me? To me they are weirdos.

The first odd occurrence was two weeks ago. I was sitting in my car with the AC on and the windows up. It was hot, too hot to turn the car off but not hot enough to force me back to the chilly temperature of my office. I was bored, flipping radio channels while stuffing my face with food. I’m sure it wasn’t a pretty sight. I glanced into the mirror to check for any messes and I notice two guys heading in the direction of the office buildings. One was slowly pedaling a bike, but nothing was odd with that.  Still not wanting any distractions or to draw attention to myself, I picked up a book and pretended to read.

A loud knock on the glass shattered my hopes of being left alone.

“Are you okay!?” Biker Dude asked me. I found this question odd. “Are you okay?” typically refers to someone being in distress, calling for help, sending out an SOS. Clearly, sitting in the cool safety of my car, reading, while fully alert did not constitute as that kind of a situation.

“Uh. Yea?” Of course my brain is saying fifty other things and the only retort I can come up with is “Uh. Yea.” Man, am I a good talker.

“Okay just checking,” he said as he did a full turn around on his bike. I guess he thought about leaving and changed his mind, because not two seconds later HE WAS BACK.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he begged, as if I were some damsel in distress that only needed saving. As if. Who is this guy?! I gave him a pointed look loaded with unspoken words and he sped off. Not ten feet from my car, Biker Guy boasts loudly to his ever-silent pedestrian friend, “Hey dude! Check out that hot chick!”

That was the point that I took my leave. I was ruffled but figured that it wasn’t an every day occurance. So I posted about it online:

And then I moved on with my life. In fact, I’d almost completely forgotten about that incident until yesterday during my lunch break. I was about fifteen minutes into enjoying my sandwich when I see a guy in a striped orange shirt ambling over in my general direction. Again, nothing odd. This time however, I had my car off and my windows down, with one foot up against the window frame for comfort. This guy, who we’ll give the pet name of Mr. Fetishes (which I’ll explain later) says hi. I mumble hi back without letting my eyes stray from the page I was reading.

I realized Mr. Fetishes was not satisfied with stopping at a simple hello when a shadow fell over my book. I was annoyed to realize that he was actually physically LEANING on my car with his head tilted down to speak to me.

“Find a nice place for lunch, did ya?” He asked from above. Again, my awesome skill of always knowing what to say kicked in.

“Yea.”

I notice that his weight is shifting. Awesome. He’s leaving. But I was wrong. Instead of his weight shifting away from me – in the direction that he needed to be headed because I wanted nothing to do with him – instead he was leaning forward, and all the sudden his wrist shot out from his arm and he reached for my leg. MY LEG THAT WAS PROPPED UP ON THE CAR FRAME. My brain had stopped processing at this point, but thankfully my leg did an auto-jerk away from the strange man with reaching hands.

And my eyes glared. Even though my mouth stayed shut, my eyes spoke VOLUMES to his in the form of:

“Stay away”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Go find someone else to bother”

and what I especially hoped to portray was this: Touch me and I will kill you.

Mr. Fetishes just had one little thing to say before he departed into the unknown, before I got so freaked out that I hit the gas running and drove straight back to the safety of my red brick office building. “I was just teasing, I just wanted to – you know – tickle your toes,” he waggled his fingers ever so sickeningly.